5 reasons why website security is important in 2018

Here’s 5 reasons, by WebARX, why website security is important. Lately, people are constantly talking about crypto-currency mining malware as the new or even worse threat to businesses than ransomware. Different enterprise-level data breaches are becoming so common that people don’t even react to them as they did a year ago. Meanwhile, SME’s make up over 99 % of all enterprises in all EU countries (source: eurostat). which is why SME’s are becoming more and more attractive to cyber-criminals who today don’t just want your data, but also resources.

WEBSITE SECURITY reason nr 1:Hacked Websites Target Your Customers

Malicious software, which is used to infect websites, gather data and in some cases even hijack computer resources. A site where an attacker has gained an access to can be used to redirect traffic, infect visitors with unwanted software and lately even to use the visitor’s computer resources to mine untraceable cryptocurrencies.There are thousands of different types of malware and thousands of different ways to infect your website, which is mostly all done by automated hacking tools. What they all have in common, is that the hacked websites are mostly used to retarget your potential customers, your website visitors.

WEBSITE SECURITY reason nr 2:The number of hacked sites rises rapidly“There was a 32 percent increase in the number of hacked sites in 2016 compared to 2015.”– Google Webmaster Central BlogBotnet-enabled attacks on vulnerable Web applications in fact accounted for more breaches (571) than any other vector in Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report. In March 2016 Google announced that more than 50 million websites world-wide are infected or malicious. In March 2015, that number was 17 million. The number of new Web application vulnerabilities published in 2017 was 212% greater than the number disclosed in 2016. WebARX data also has shown a great rise of hacked sites. We detected 95 787 hacked sites in 2016. In 2017 that number was almost six times higher – 547 729.

WEBSITE SECURITY reason nr 3:Business Reputation Loss and Drop In RevenueBecause of a hacked website, a customer loses trust and therefore it will lead to company reputation loss, which for e-commerce can often mean an end of the business.When your site is hacked and added to different blacklists, the potential customer cannot reach to the products or services being offered.Google and other search engines (for who you typically don’t want to be on the naughty list) warn your customers and restrict them from entering your website. Lately, Google, for example, has stepped up the game even more. Starting from July 2018, every website without SSL (HTTPS) will be marked as insecure and therefore receive an SEO penalty, which makes it harder for your company to reach to new customers.

Anyways, if a potential customer visits your site and gets warned or infected, there is an extremely low chance that the customer will ever visit your site again.

WEBSITE SECURITY reason nr 4:Learning from mistakes: website clean-up is more expensive than protectionAs a website owner discovering that your website has been hacked, the first thing to do is to search “How to clean up hacked site”. Yes, you will find a lot of blog posts and articles about it, but they will all eventually recommend you the same thing – have a professional to do it for you.The process of a malware clean-up of a website is much more about knowing the vulnerabilities and knowing the way of a hacker mind, than just manually going through the files. Malware is often hidden to the original files and to the database and attackers put a lot of effort into making sure you won’t be able to remove their backdoors so easily.Expensive, indeed. Not just the malware clean-up service itself, but the lost revenue and reputational damage are what can eat up a lot of time and money to recover from.

WEBSITE SECURITY reason nr 5:Website gets blacklistedWhat is the Blacklist?Without using the exact term “blacklist,” Google quarantines at least 10,000 suspicious websites each day. You can recognize the sites by seeing the display message “This site may harm your computer” in search results. This will serve as a warning that prompts most users to stay away. Consumers are grateful for the warning. The business panics. (source: Forbes)Cleaning up your site is only the first part of becoming relisted on Google. Before you put your site out there again, be sure you have measures in place to prevent a recurrence. You may be susceptible to the same cybercriminals who infected your site the first time if you don’t step up your security measures.Check if your website is blacklisted here: BLACKLIST CHECK